When I was in middle school, I told my parents the only thing I wanted for Christmas was a suitcase.

You may think upon reading, that we were a family who traveled regularly. We weren’t. The only true family vacation we took when I was a kid, was when my parents packed up my brother and I in our Ford Tempo and drove from Maine to Florida. I was 4-years-old and when I try to think back on this time, only vague snapshots surface.

Though our spring breaks were not filled with trips to Disney, I do credit the women in my family for inspiring my love for travel.

Sometime after the Florida trip, my mother and her mother (Nana), took my brother and I to Arizona, where my aunts and uncles and cousins lived. Again, the glimpses of my first flight and jaunt out West have little grip on my memory. But there’s a moment at O’Hare airport that I have to wonder: is it because of this that I’m drawn to adventure?

Way before cell phones and a common know-how of air travel existed, somehow, my Nana and I got separated from my mom and brother. We searched a bit but couldn’t find them amongst the swarm of passengers.

So we did what anyone would do when pressed for time and, essentially lost (at least to my young brain): we got ice cream. We took the old school advice on being lost and simply stayed put. I’m not sure if it was the ice cream or my childhood innocence, but at that point, any fear I had subsided. My mom recalls finding “someone in a fancy jacket” and having us paged, but Nana and I didn’t hear it over the passing chatter and shoes clicking against the cemented floor. Or again, maybe the ice cream. By chance, as Nana and I stood there licking our strawberry cones, the responsible members of our party found us.

It should also be noted that Nana never traveled. She didn’t have the traveler’s instinct that comes with navigating crowds and new territory. I didn’t know that at the time and it didn’t matter.

My mom wasn’t very happy when she happened upon us, in fact, she was downright scared. Now, we laugh at the memory as if there was never any backlash of “what-if.”

From there, the years were filled with local adventures: camping trips to the remote Baxter State Park, outlet shopping in neighboring New Hampshire, a bus ride to New York City for a WNBA game, an in-state hotel-stay one Easter and day trips to Acadia National Park.

But when my older sister moved to Florida while I was in middle school, I wanted to visit. My Gram had been spending a couple months each spring in the Sunshine State and I was dying to go while she was there.

In eighth grade, I boarded my first flight since the Arizona trip, this time, with no adults accompanying me. In fact, my best friend, Laura, joined me. Our parents saved their money to make it possible and we did extra chores to earn spending cash.

The thrill of this independence has never left and it guides me as a Mother today. Of course, I would be blessed with Lexi, my strong-willed daughter, now 9, who tells me she wants to climb Everest and be an astronaut and live in Paris someday.

And I can’t help but wonder, what was that “ice cream” moment for Lexi? Sure, I could ask her. But, I think it’s one of those things that comes later in life when you are retracing your roots and uncovering different layers of yourself as an adult.

As I continue to unravel what travel means to me and how it fits into my life, a question I think we should forever ask ourselves no matter how far and wide we’ve trekked, I know that my dreams of exploration did not come from travel itself, but from the people around me that did not let me see a fear in the unknown.

To them, I am grateful. Not just because these women helped create a sense of adventure in me, but because they also modeled how to be this person for the little ones in my life.